Iron Stomach
by enthusiasmgirl
Summary: Matt doesn't really understand why, but Foggy's superpower seems to be eating things that would kill a normal person. It's disgusting, but Matt's seen it in action enough times to be kind of impressed by it.


So this is a response to the following prompt on the Daredevil Kink Meme that made me chuckle:

i see college-era foggy as the type of person who would accidentally eat food a couple days past it's use-by, or like eat the leftover takeout that probably should have been taken out two days ago but foggy's attitude is smells fine = is fine.

enter matt, who can smell bad food a day before it's going to go bad but this isn't something he can tell foggy about so he tries to subtly let him know his food is off/nearly-off but foggy's always like "NAH- smells good"

how many times do you think foggy's pulled a sandwich from the bottom of his satchel or a take-out container from the fridge and proceeded to eat it while matt's sitting there just SCREAMING INTERNALLY while foggy is chowing down on off/nearly-off food?

* * *

It started with a pizza, the day after they moved into the dorm. The pizza had arrived the night of the move-in actually, following the coffee and rejections from what Matt assumed were pretty girls, and the resulting evening of drinking beers and sharing stories. But it was the next day that the pizza became the start of a problem.

Specifically, Matt's problem and Foggy's lack of one. The pizza hadn't been finished, and in their buzzed state of inebriation they had forgotten to throw it out. Normally, this would have been a completely offensive idea to Matt, but the alcohol in his system meant that the distasteful odor of stale crust, hard cheese and room temperature meat didn't bother him as he drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, he awoke to find his new roommate finishing it off from his bed. "Ugh, what the hell are you doing, Foggy?" Matt said, disgusted and only barely awake.

"Oh, man, I'm sorry," said Foggy. "Did you want some?" He held a piece out towards Matt and the smell nearly made him retch. He felt like he could pinpoint all of the millions of bacteria feeding on the offending pizza slice individually if he wanted to. And he most definitely did not want to. "Are you out of your mind? That's disgusting," Matt said, "You're going to make yourself really sick."

Foggy continued chewing with his mouth open and didn't seem bothered by Matt's assertion. "Suit yourself, man. I do this all the time. It's just pizza."

It bothered Matt, but he wanted to like Foggy and he hoped that they wouldn't have a problem living together. So he put it out of his mind, and only registered a small amount of surprise that at no point did the other man get a violent case of food poisoning.

Some time later, Matt realized that Foggy was someone who liked to tempt fate. As groceries began to overcrowd their tiny dorm mini-fridge, Matt couldn't help but notice that Foggy's food always took up more space than his and that his friend didn't always like to throw things out. Matt couldn't be certain, but he suspected that some of Foggy's food had been in there long past it's use-by date.

"Hey Foggy," he said to him one day, giving him a gentle push in the right direction, "Could you maybe clean the fridge out? I think some of the stuff in there might be going bad."

"Nah," said Foggy casually. "It's all good, man. The expiration dates are totally just there to get you to buy new food when you don't have to. It's a grocery store scam. Relax." The next day, Foggy pulled out a carton of milk that smelled so sour it was all Matt could do not to flee the room in terror. He could taste it in the air. But Foggy gave it a dutiful sniff, and drank what remained of it right from the carton. That night, Matt stayed up in his bed, waiting for the moment when his roommate bolted from the room and hoped to make it to a bathroom on time. It never came.

After that, Matt made it a habit to clean out the fridge himself and throw out anything that smelled off, a sensory chore but a necessary one. If Foggy ever had a problem with Matt throwing out his food, he never said anything. Matt made it his duty to keep his friend safe from his own worst impulses. The man would kill himself someday if nobody stopped him.

For years, Matt sensed Foggy put all manner of unsafe food into his body. Lettuce that Matt could tell had gone brown. Hot dogs from street vendors who must have paid off a crooked health inspector. Korean BBQ food from a place down the street whose meat was most definitely not what the menu said it was. Once, Foggy even ate a sandwich from a gas station vending machine. It was horrifying, but Matt put up with it because he loved his friend. But he always tried to warn him, and he always listened carefully afterwards for the signs that his friend needed him to help him find a bathroom, or bring him something to puke in, or take him to the hospital. But it just never happened. Matt didn't understand.

One evening when they were working late at their office, Foggy once again reached for a disgusting room temperature pizza. Matt knew it had been sitting out since the night before. The chicken was a salmonella outbreak waiting to happen, and the crust was so hard that Foggy was having difficulty chewing it. But Foggy ate it anyway, because that was Foggy and they couldn't really afford another dinner ordered in. And Foggy did what he always did in these situations. He offered a slice to Matt, expecting Matt to tell him how sick he would get and refuse it. He was surprised when Matt didn't.

"Wait, seriously?" Foggy asked. "No rant about how there are millions of different types of bacteria that can live on food at room temperature and make you wish for death?"

Matt sighed. "And yet you live. So clearly modern science has greatly underestimated the human risk of food poisoning. Plus, I'm starving." Foggy laughed when Matt took the slice from him but plugged his nose while he ate it. "You know, before I would have bugged you for being sensitive, but I know you are now so you must really be hungry," he commented, laughing to himself.

He wasn't laughing two hours later when he sat next to Matt on the dingy floor of their office bathroom rubbing his back while the pizza, and what appeared to Foggy to be all of Matt's internal organs, were heaved up and out of his body into the toilet. "I hate you so much right now," Matt said, breathless and sweating between bouts of vomiting. "So much," he reiterated.

"I'm sorry, Matt, really I am," Foggy said. "Apparently my superpower is not getting food poisoning, I guess? I am Iron Stomach!" Matt was not amused.


End file.
